Character separation in text
by Alejandro Benavente
on
Apr 22, 2009 at 11:59:09 am
Hi!
Sorry if this has been already discussed, I haven't been able to find a solution via search.
I'm working on a simple logo animation in which I have a string of characters. I have animated them so that they change value over time (i.e. a random letter shows for each character every frame), till the correct one shows up to form the logo... pretty straightforward stuff.
Now, the tricky bit is that my string of characters (a single long word, actually) has a separation in-between characters which is dictated by the final word. When the character values change, the space between them does not, thus messing things up quite a bit.
As an example, if I have a string which reads S-I-G-N-A-L, the "I" character is quite close to the next one; when its value changes to, say, a "W" (which is obviously much wider), the space does not adapt, and the "W" overlaps the "G", which doesn't look quite right.
The most obvious solution would be using a fixed-width font, but I cannot because I have to stick with the logo typography.
I have fiddled with all kind of text parameters to no avail, and I'm not that much into expressions to know if it can be fixed this way.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks a lot in advance.
Alex.
Re: Character separation in text by Trent Armstrong on Apr 22, 2009 at 5:22:35 pm
Are you interested in the actual position of the other letters changing?
If you just want all the letters to stay in the same place but not overlap, you could do a precomped animation of several hand-picked letters that you can squeeze horizontally to fit in the space until the "I" is required.
If you want the spacing between the letters to change, you might be able to set up an expression to check the letters. If the letter is not "I", the position of all the other letters is changed so they can make room for the wider letter.
Re: Character separation in text by david bogie on Apr 22, 2009 at 5:39:49 pm
How are you controlling the animation? Using text animators or hard-coding it?
In the olden days, we'd create a long tall vertical list of words in AI/PS/AE and, using hold keyframes, change the Y coordinates of the list so the effect was a random selection of glyphs. Since they were individual words, the typography was easily perfected on each one.
Re: Character separation in text by Alejandro Benavente on Apr 22, 2009 at 7:22:24 pm
Thanks for the tips, guys.
The animation is controlled with a simple text animator (Character Offset), a fairly easy setup. As this controls the value for the whole string of letters, it might not be possible to achieve the desired effect.
If I don't come up with an alternative, I think I'll give Bogie's solution a try, even though it requires rebuilding much of the work (there are several layers of effects and animations on top of this basic one).
Re: Character separation in text by Jason Milligan on Apr 23, 2009 at 9:14:55 pm
[david bogie]"Jason, interesting idea, but how would that get adjusted? "
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the issue, but I am assuming that what the OP means by 'character separation' is kerning. If that's the case, turning on 'adjust kerning' while using character offset will adjust the kerning on the fly filling in the problematic gaps between characters. The drawback will be that other characters will shift and not remain at the exact same coordinates. If that shifting is a problem, then my solution is no good.
Thanks for joining the thread, Jason.
Your tip seems to be spot on, that's the option I was looking for... yet I can't find it!
I might be mislead because my AE interface is in Spanish, but under Animation > Range Selector, the only properties showing up are Start, End, and Offset, all of them percentages...
Now, the Character Alignment property does show up if I set up a Character Value animation, yet that's not the one I'm using, but Character Offset (slight but important different behaviour).
I can add an animation property for Character Separation (I guess this shows up as kerning in Eng GUI), but the property is numerical, I cannot set it to auto or adjust.
As for the character shifting location... yeah, I thought about that. The string is already alligned to center, and that hopefully will keep things reasonably steady, the animation is quite fast. I'd really have to try it to see if it looks right.
Thanks once more for your efforts, guys, I keep working on it.
Alex.
Re: How about center? by Jason Milligan on Apr 24, 2009 at 5:20:24 pm
[Alejandro Benavente]"I might be mislead because my AE interface is in Spanish, but under Animation > Range Selector, the only properties showing up are Start, End, and Offset, all of them percentages... "
Sorry about that. It doesn't appear under the dropdown for 'range selector' but right beneath the category.
Once you've added the 'character offset' animator, you should see:
Animator 1
Range Selector 1
Character Alignment [Left or Top] Character Range [Preserve Case and Digits]
Character Offset
Change [Left or Top] to [Adjust Kerning]
Hopefully the Spanish interface isn't too different.
You're absolutely right, Jason, that solves it.
Here's the weird thing, though: the character alignment parameter does't show up on my text layer. I'm not sure what I may have done during editing but I just lost it at some point. Now, if I start over with a new text layer and apply the character offset, it does indeed show up, and setting the "adjust kerning" option solves the whole thing for me.
Never mind about it, though.
Well, thanks a lot all of you guys for your help.
Alex.
